Stewartry pair go for gold

High hopes of medals for Commonwealth Games athletes from the Stewratry

Stewartry duo Kirsty Yates and Gareth Montgomerie go for gold next week at the Commonwealth Games.

The shot putter and mountain biker are part of Team Scotland for the Glasgow-based games which got under way on Thursday.

Castle Douglas’ Montgomerie is first up in competition when he takes to the dirt tracks of Cathkin Braes Country Park on Tuesday afternoon in his bid for a Commonwealth medal.

The 32-year-old is competing in his second games having taken part in Melbourne in 2006 where he finished in 13th spot.

Action starts at 2pm on Tuesday and he hopes to go a lot better this time around.

He previously told the News: “A medal is the target. It’s definitely realistic and hopefully one of us will be able to get that. The crowds are going to be unreal. The support we had in Melbourne was incredible but this is going to be something else.”

Montgomerie is part of a team of five mountain bikers in the Scotland squad and knows the medal track fairly well already.

He added: “I’ve probably ridden it more than anyone else. It’s definitely a challenging course but I think it will suit my strengths as it’s quite a power course.”

On Wednesday night it’s Haugh of Urr’s Kirsty Yates’ turn in the spotlight. Qualifying rounds have been scrapped for the Woman’s Shot Put event and she goes straight into the Hampden Park final at 8.40pm.

The 21-year-old previously claimed she’ll be using the event as experience for the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games and that her goal was simply to get to the final. Well that has already been achieved with the changes to the competition.

She twice made the qualifying target for the games but was only informed last month that she’d be a part of Team Scotland. She threw a personal best of 16.09m at a club competition in Portugal in May while competing for Edinburgh Athletics Club